He quickly scanned the room, but didn’t see an envelope. However, it did look as though someone had been in there. The spines of her grandmother’s journals were uneven, and there were spaces where books had been removed. Jack picked up the sketch of the black cat and looked beneath it. There was a piece of paper with some notes on it in Cara Lynn’s hand. And beneath the paper a journal that should have been on the shelf behind him. He picked it up and put it back. Then he checked around the small room, but he didn’t see the envelope.
Back in the kitchen he put the piece of an envelope flap into a plastic baggie. Unlocking his briefcase, he dug under a small stack of architectural drawings and paper-clipped reports down to several rubber-banded stacks of envelopes.
Rifling through them, he found the ones postmarked the earliest. “Okay, Granddad,” he whispered. “I met most of the Delanceys tonight. Let’s see if my impression of them matches yours.”
As he began to read his grandfather’s letter for the twentieth time, or the fiftieth, he thought about what he’d told Cara Lynn, about needing to stay up to work on some plans, his implication being that they were architectural drawings.
He smothered a wry laugh. He was working on plans all right—plans to clear his grandfather’s name. He’d married Cara Lynn Delancey to gain access to the documents that could help him prove his granddad’s innocence. If he broke her heart, well, maybe that would satisfy his need for revenge.
* * *
HOURS LATER, JACK rubbed his eyes and yawned. A glance at the kitchen clock told him that his burning eyes and foggy head were telling him the truth. He had been up all night. It was after 5:00 a.m.
Cara Lynn would be getting up in about an hour. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but he’d wanted to read over his grandfather’s notes while his first impressions of the Delanceys were still fresh in his mind.
He had looked forward to hating every single one of them. But to his surprise, he didn’t. They seemed like ordinary people. Okay, maybe not ordinary. He sorted through the letters again until he came to the one where Granddad had listed Con Delancey’s grandchildren.
Mr. Delancey’s two sons, Michael and Robert, seem rather ordinary, although I can see that they have the genes to be great, like their father. But perhaps Con’s philandering and their mother’s resentment kept them from achieving everything they could have. In any case, their children—Con’s grandchildren—are but babies and it’s already obvious they are extraordinary.
Robert, Jr. is the oldest, at nine. Already, it seems to me, he is showing a remarkable resemblance to his grandfather, both in looks and personality. Maybe it’s because he’s the oldest, but I see in him the most potential of all of them. Mark my word, he’ll follow Con into politics, and likely, will be better at it.
Jack took a pencil and jotted a note in the margin, next to the comment. Died in plane crash at age twenty-three. So much for potential.
He read the next line. Lucas, his younger brother, is at age six, already intense, even angry, much like his father. If he continues like this, he’ll be a criminal before he’s twenty-one. Maybe he can turn himself around.
Jack remembered Lucas and his wife Angela, who was carrying their first child. Jack wrote in the margin. Still intense. Channeled into police work.
Jack continued down the list of Delancey children and his grandfather’s impressions of them. A fierce jealousy rose up inside him, as it had every other time he read it. He hated that his grandfather had spent even a few moments thinking about Con Delancey’s grandkids and what he saw them becoming as they grew.
But more than that, he hated that his grandfather had been right about them. While he had not been a prophet, he’d certainly been insightful enough to see that Con Delancey’s grandkids were extraordinary.
Armand Broussard had thought his own grandson was extraordinary, too. Jack blinked against the sudden stinging in his eyes. He missed his granddad. Had it already been half a year since he’d died? Jack had never seen him in anything except his orange prison jumpsuit, until he looked at him in the casket before the funeral service. That sight, his beloved Papi in a dark suit with that awful makeup and lipstick designed to make the corpse look natural, made Jack cry for the first time in his life.
“I’m sorry about that, Papi,” he whispered, repeating the same words he’d uttered over his grandfather’s body that day at the funeral home. “I couldn’t help that. But I swear I will clear your name.”
He put the letter back in its ragged envelope, slid the rubber band around the stack and inserted it under the architectural plans and drawings. Then he took out a small spiral bound notebook and paged through it for the notes he’d jotted as he’d read through the letters the first time. After glancing at his handwritten notes, he leaned back in the kitchen chair and stretched.
He didn’t have to refer to any notes to recall what his grandfather had said to him at their last meeting. Ah, Jacques. You are so smart and so wise for your years. But you’re drowning your talents in jealousy and hatred. It’s no way to live, mon petit. It will eat up all the goodness and love inside you and leave you empty and alone. You must forgive them, son. The murder of Con Delancey was only one act by one pathetic individual. The Broussard name is a proud one, but it is not worth the ruination of your life. You can be the better man.
“I’m sorry, Papi,” Jack muttered. “I can never be as good a man as you were.”
Standing, Jack locked his briefcase and slipped into the bedroom and lay down beside Cara Lynn, whose back was turned. For a few seconds, he lay and watched her sleep. She was so beautiful, with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted.
As he’d thought earlier at the reception, she really was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met. Her eyes were always clear and blue, her expression was always open and trusting. He sometimes felt guilty for deceiving her. But it had been the perfect ruse. After all, she was a Delancey, and the Delanceys had ruined his grandfather’s life.
As the thoughts flitted drowsily through his mind, his gaze traced the flowing line of her shoulder and torso where the moonlight danced off her skin. He admired the curve of her hips and imagined the shadow centered between them and felt himself harden with desire. He closed his eyes deliberately and turned over, putting his back to hers.
As he did, the bedclothes rustled. After a second, she slid her arm under his and rested her hand on his flat belly. The muscles there contracted when her warm fingers splayed against his skin and the arousal he’d almost managed to quell rose up again.
Desperately, afraid she might decide to slide her hand lower and coax him into early morning sex, he wrapped her hand in his.
“What time is it?” she asked drowsily.
“Five thirty or so,” he said.
“Have you been up all night?”
He nodded. “Told you, I had some plans to go over, but I don’t have to go in early today, so I’ll have plenty of time to take a nap after you leave.”
“Well, in that case...” she murmured in a low voice. At the same time she leaned forward and kissed his bare shoulder.
He grimaced, but he turned onto his back and held up his arm so she could slide into his embrace and rest her head in the little hollow between his neck and shoulder.
